Skip to Content
Symbian for Software Leaders: Principles of Successful Smartphone Development Projects
book

Symbian for Software Leaders: Principles of Successful Smartphone Development Projects

by David Wood
September 2005
Intermediate to advanced
328 pages
7h 7m
English
Wiley
Content preview from Symbian for Software Leaders: Principles of Successful Smartphone Development Projects

Chapter 20. Designing for smartphones

The licensing question

Symbian's focus on smartphones arose from the confluence of several strands of events. One of these sequences of events gathered pace in the mid 1990s. In 1995, analysts and journalists seemed to delight in posing the following question to Psion representatives: Would Psion die like Apple, or would Psion die like IBM?

At that time, Psion was widely perceived (in Europe, if not further afield) as having the best PDAs available – the same way as Apple was widely perceived to have the best desktop computers. However, Apple's software system was only available on Apple hardware; likewise, Psion's software system was, at the time, only available on Psion hardware. So, in both cases, third-party developers needed to take a leap of faith before learning how to program for this software system. The leap of faith was that the limited hardware platform would be strong enough, by itself, to drive sufficient volume sales to repay the investment.

In contrast, Microsoft Windows was seen as markedly inferior to Apple's software system, but it was available on an increasing number of different hardware devices. Some of these different hardware manufacturers failed and went out of business, but others brought some additional market distribution and market share, selling PCs to many people who previously hadn't thought of buying such a device. Because of the larger volume sales, Windows was a more attractive proposition for the third-party ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

What Successful Project Managers Do

What Successful Project Managers Do

W. Scott Cameron, Jeffrey S. Russell, Edward J. Hoffman, Alexander Laufer
How to Overcome a Power Deficit

How to Overcome a Power Deficit

Cyril Bouquet, Jean-Louis Barsoux

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780470016831Purchase book